On father's birthday, Mukesh Ambani gives Anil Ambani Rs 23,000 crore relief

On father's birthday, Mukesh Ambani gives Anil Ambani Rs 23,000 crore relief

Anil Ambani's struggling telecom operations received a bail-out from elder brother Mukesh's Reliance Jio+ as the siblings announced a wide-ranging, but expected, deal for spectrum, towers and optic fibre assets on their father's birthday.
While the companies are yet to announce the deal size, it is estimated to be worth around Rs 23,000 crore, a massive relief for Anil's debt-ridden Reliance Communications (RCom) that is saddled with loans of nearly Rs 45,000 crore and was facing possible bankruptcy proceedings.
The deal, announced late on Thursday evening, marks the exit of Anil's RCom from the consumer telecom space, a business he received in 2005 as part of a bitterly-fought family settlement with Mukesh+ . He had already stopped the company's consumer 2G and 3G operations at the end of November, deciding to continue with only the enterprise business as well as sale of assets. The company's recent struggles to stay afloat are in sharp contrast to its heyday in 2010, when it was India's second largest mobile operator.Anil had said on Tuesday that after the completion of the revival process, the 'new RCom' would have debt of just Rs 6,000 crore, down from Rs 45,000 crore in October. RCom will serve only the low-capex and high-margin enterprise space from here on, he had added.